OBJECT LESSONS: Architecture & Design News

1 World Trade Center’s Soaring Curtain Wall Nears Completion

Tasked with designing the Seagram Building in New York City, Mies van der Rohe (who would have turned 127 today) famously concluded that the modern skyscraper best expresses its tectonic strength when it is still under construction, when the individuated floors and load-bearing columns, endlessly stacked one atop another, are unconcealed by an enclosing facade. While the exterior of the Seagram Building sought to preserve some of this structural clarity on its bronze and glass curtain wall, this is not the case for many contemporary towers, including New York’s 1 WTC. New Yorkers, along with the almost 14,000 followers of the WTCProgress Twitter, have watched the “Freedom Tower” rise for almost 8 years now, and that itty bitty bit of exposed steel frame is going away soon, as one of the most recently tweeted photos from WTCProgress reveals, so enjoy this image of incompletion while you can.